


Running Ragged

by josephina_x



Series: Labyrinth Earth [3]
Category: Smallville
Genre: (no worse than canon), Adopted Sibling Relationship, Coping, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, On the Run
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:43:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex and Clark are on the run from Lionel... or, rather, Lex and Superman are. "Clark" isn't Clark, really, Lex is coming to find...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No Rest For The Certifiably Insane

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Running Ragged  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: R (for hints of previous depression, aftereffects of mindcontrol, language, etc.)  
> Spoilers: up through Labyrinth, obviously, and a bit farther than that -- through the entire series, in fact; future-fic  
> Word count: ???+  
> Summary: Lex and Clark are on the run from Lionel... or, rather, Lex and Superman are. "Clark" isn't Clark, really, Lex is coming to find...  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd. Possibly triggering(?) descriptions of depressive episodes.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Next in the Labyrinth Earth series, directly following the events of "Bootstrapping (Finding a Place in this Crazy World)".

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex roused slowly, and frowned as he did so. It took him a moment to get his bearings, and then another tense moment remembering (one) where he was and (two) what had happened, and determining why he'd woken up in the first place.

Because he didn't 'just' wake up on his own, not ever, not after the accident, he assumed that it must be left over from his original bout of depression. And while alarm clocks helped with the waking aspect of it, he hardly ever had any internal impetus when it came to the actual getting-out-of-bed part. Some days he just really didn't want to move. Some days, the only thing that helped was the fact that, if he didn't get up by a reasonable hour, his staff would just enter his room and work around him, and he hated the idea of his staff scowling to themselves and looking down on him for his laziness, when they had to work and he... didn't.

Oh, yes -- Lex had gotten very good at waking to the sound of muted footsteps approaching from well-outside his bedroom door over the years. And that was what had woken him up now. Not the early morning light peeking in around heavy curtains into the dark room, not the soft sounds of breathing from Clark -- no, it was the sound of multiple people mulling around outside their motel room, closing in.

Lex shivered at the soft, muted sounds from out-of-doors, and wondered if he should feel grateful that the roadside motel which they were staying at had an outside perimeter of space. The 'emergency evacuation' map on the door had shown their location to be a corner room of a long line of the same in a rectangular-looking building next to a roadway; the 'safe congregation area' looked to be an appreciable distance away, across the street.

If they had been staying at a hotel proper, hiding in an inner-room on a middle floor, Clark would have a much harder time attempting to speed them out and around whatever police (or private 'security officers' that were in LuthorCorp employ) might be about to break in and grab them. If their pursuers were bunched together in too-close quarters, Clark might not be able to get past them without being seen, or otherwise needing to rely on his bulletproof skin, and that would increase his exposure. Here, they could probably go out through the window if they had to, and avoid any such group entirely.

And they really needed to go _now_.

Lex reached out a hand and shook Clark at the shoulder to wake him.

...No response.

Lex shoved at him harder, and cursed himself because Clark was on his belly and, what with not having any leg-length from the knee-down and no real leverage, Lex couldn't move Clark at all.

He tried slapping Clark upside the head, but all that served to do was make his hand ache and force him to stifle another choice curse or two. He even resorted to pulling the alien man's hair. Nothing. Zero response.

His head swiveled up as he heard louder noises coming from outside, now, and every nerve-ending shrilled a panicked warning to him. Those noises were now sharp, but muted, and very, very distinct. It was the kind of distinct that one heard (or didn't hear, rather) when a large group of people were trying very, very hard to be very, very quiet.

He could practically feel the hit when the adrenaline his brain was dumping into his system abruptly kicked in.

Lex dropped all notion of escape with Clark -- he wasn't moving! -- and instead rapidly considered and discarded option after option as he rolled over onto his side and scanned the room.

He gritted his teeth and shoved himself over the side of the bed. Not giving himself time to think, he just grabbed a double-handful of bedsheet as he went over the edge head-first.

The world flipped upside-down, and then he was sitting on the ancient carpeted floor, feeling both slightly nauseous and a little dazed.

He shivered and shook himself, because while that had been much faster and far less painful a drop than he'd been expecting, he didn't have time to sit around on his ass dilly-dallying around -- he needed to move.

Lex started with a jolt at the banging noise on the door -- three times in rapid succession -- and a yell of "Police! Open up!!"

Lex ducked down and wheezed as he remembered to breathe, and a shudder as his heart got over its skip-skip-beat and restarted into a proper rhythm on him again.

The police pounded on the door again, and Lex panicked. He couldn't be caught out here like this. Not like this. He was a cripple, a bald-headed freak. He was going to be surrounded by incredibly able-bodied individuals in short order. He _wouldn't_ be treated well. He needed to not be found. He needed to--

His hand slid back and then he started when his fingers didn't meet the expected resistance. He grabbed at the overlong sheets and pulled them aside.

The bed didn't go straight down to the floor. It was actually up on legs; it wasn't just a simple boxframe that was resting on the floor holding the mattresses.

Another spate of door pounding had Lex jerking up his head again almost against his will. "Open up _now_ , you two!! We know you're in there!"

Oh, god. They were going to--

Clark...!

Lex shook himself. _Clark can take care of himself,_ he decided grimly, as feelings of self-preservation kicked in. He flattened himself against the floor, rolled over onto his belly, and then half-crawled half-pulled himself under the bed. It was a tight fit; he didn't have enough space to turn his head even the slightest bit, and he scraped his shoulders several times getting all of the way under.

Lex didn't let that stop him, though. He pulled himself to what he thought was the center of the space, then batted behind him without being able to see, trying to fix the sheets so that it wasn't obvious from the outside where he'd hidden himself away to.

He made it just in time. In the jet-black darkness under the bed, all Lex could do was lie still and listen. Lex heard the door slam open and multiple pairs of boots tromp in. He heard shouts of 'here!' and, after some movement in the direction of the bathroom and general banging and rummaging about, 'clear!'

It made him feel very lucky that he'd at least had enough of his wits about him not to attempt hiding in the bathroom, or in any of the furnishings' cabinets or drawers.

"Where's the other one?" he heard.

"No idea," said someone else. Male voices. All male. Male, and with that particular edge in them that Lex had always associated with Oliver-fucking-Queen on a bad day at Excelsior. Lex shivered again.

 _Please don't think to check the bedframe,_ Lex prayed. _Please be the underpaid idiot jackbooted drones like everyone supposes you to be. Please don't be that thorough._ Because he knew from before his accident that most hotel and motel room beds were _not_ like this. Most overnight establishments didn't have mattresses up on a frame with legs for the sole reason that it created an additional requirement for cleaning under the bed where dirt could accumulate, along with... _other things_ , and he was really trying not to panic about what he might have crawled through without realizing it, or how much dust there was down here, or whether he might have an asthma attack and need his inhaler, or how loud he was breathing and whether it could be heard. His skin was already crawling as it was.

"Think we should shoot him?" he heard another voice ask, sounding amused.

A clack of a bullet sliding into a chamber sounded, and Lex went still as stone, and about as cold.

"Not funny, Murray," Lex heard, but he hardly took it as a license to breathe easy.

"Yeah," someone else said, along with the sound of nearing footsteps. "You'll need the loony alive for questioning to find the other one."

"Ch," said the violent one. "All in one piece?"

There were a few chuckles, and a few good-natured groans.

...Well, if he hadn't been entirely certain before, Lex was now feeling thoroughly vindicated in his decision not to attempt to deal with these people through straightforward and calm discourse. They were animals.

More footsteps from outside, and then:

"All right, what's the damage?" Lex heard a voice of authority ring out, as it moved in closer, through the door.

"Found one of 'em," he heard. "The other lunatic's still missing, though." And that did not quite confirm _or_ deny Lionel's claim on Lex's official documented mental status, damn it. If only he had his legs, he swore he wouldn't have to hide; if only he had his legs, hell, he'd be able to throttle someone.

If only he had his legs...

"Doubt the cripple could've gotten all that far," he heard.

"Well, they got this far, didn't they?" Mr. Authority said grumpily, then, "Get that one cuffed, up, and into one of the squad cars."

"Fine, fine," one of the shock troops said, then Lex heard the slide of cloth-across-metal, and a grunt.

Lex started to feel a rising panic again and had to stuff the back of his hand up against his mouth. If they took Clark away, and Lex was stuck here, alone... oh god, really really alone, what was he going to do? No money, no wheelchair, and an arrest warrant out for him -- he was completely screwed, was what he was, and--

"What the hell?!?"

Lex blinked in the darkness.

"The hell's the problem?" he heard, and then a thump on the floor.

He heard a couple laughs, and then, "I can't move the bastard!"

More laughs.

"He's _heavy!_ " came the complaint.

Mr. Authority just huffed and said, "Petersen, Johnson: you two help."

Lex listened while three sets of footsteps approached, and then...

Strained breathing. Grunts.

Then it stopped. Panting.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he heard, then a "What the hell?"

"Christ, you idiots," came the Murray from before. "If he's such a heavy fuck, just pull him out by the blanket. Morons."

Lex barely stifled a yelp as the blanket rose in front of him -- he could see boots.

 _No-one is looking down,_ he told himself hysterically. _No-one can see me under here,_ he made his mantra.

He heard tugging, and then tugging and cursing, and those boots not two feet right in front of him were straining against the well-worn carpeted floor.

Lex shivered and stayed where he was, because if he moved, he would make noise, and if he made noise...

"Fuck!" Murray exploded. "What the fuck is this?" he shouted angrily.

"The hell is going on?" Mr. Authority said, coming back in. Dark burgundy dress shoes, obviously not just some street-cop.

"The fucker won't move!" Murray said, with a pause and a belatedly added, "sir."

"Mmph," Lex heard, and a shifting of bed and mattress above him.

He could almost hear the stares all around as Clark resettled on the mattress, which creaked and dipped under the pressure a bit.

"Won't move, huh," Mr. Authority said in descending tones.

"But... he..." came a soft stutter.

"Hey, you," the Authority said loudly, approaching the bed. A scurry of footsteps moved out of the way and the bedsheets fell back down -- thank god. "Wake up."

A soft sleepy grumble and clearly unawake sigh was the only response.

In the following silence, Lex swore he could hear the gnashing of teeth.

"Bring me the megaphone from my car," the Authority ordered.

 _Oh god,_ Lex thought, as he numbly listened to the man's order being carried out. _I should stop him. Kal was in a bad mood earlier._ Rather, Kal had been _near-homicidal_ earlier. If they woke him up like this, and Kal-El came out first without Clark awake enough to subdue him... _I should stop them._

_I should stop them._

But Lex was too scared to move out from under the bed. He was frozen in place.

The megaphone clicked on.

_Oh, god._

~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Waking Absence, Fleet and Gone

~*~*~*~*~*~

The megaphone got used.

There was a yelp, and a loud thud, and Lex heard a loud "Nnn..." groan and a soft "Wh--?" exclamation and...

There weren't any snickers or yells for a long second.

Lex squeezed his eyes shut and fought the urge to scream.

"Ah, 'm sorry sirs," Lex heard, and his eyes flew open, even though he couldn't see a damn thing. "Knew I shoulda woke th' folks in the office last night, 'stead of just takin' the night 'afore gettin' m' work done."

He lay there in startled shock, forgetting how to breathe, as he listened to the man ramble on with apologies and confused queries.

Was this what Clark had meant by a persona?

...Why did the reporter-him have a soft _southern_ accent?

"Didn't mean t' startle the staff none a' t'all. ...Sorry 'bout that, ma'am," he heard, and the sounds of someone standing up. "Should be gettin' t' th' office t' work on them computers like m'cousin asked."

"Ah?" he heard a soft, feminine voice exclaim in light confusion.

"Ma'am," he heard, "m'cousin, Joey, said somethin' 'bout his lil' sis' needin' help with th' soft-ware on th'--"

"Oh. Oh! Si, senor -- yes-yes!" he heard the Hispanic woman say with quickly growing enthusiasm, from the vicinity of the open doorway, it sounded like. "This way. To office! Please! Senorita is upset, very, to fix is mucho bueno. Gracias!"

"Now... Now, wait just a minute, just..." he heard the Authority say, sounding a little out of his depth suddenly, but there were retreating footsteps, and then...

Silence.

_What the heck just happened?_

...Clark had led them away.

Lex let out a long shaky breath, then carefully slid his right hand under his head, getting it up off of the carpet a bit. He breathed against the back of his wrist, and tried not to think about the constricted feeling in his chest. _I am not going to have an asthma attack,_ he told himself. _I'm not. I haven't had one in years. Clark was probably right. It wasn't just a lack of dust around the mansion. It wasn't just an avoidance of pollen or anything substantially triggering. It wasn't just because I didn't go into town often. I don't need my inhaler. My throat feels fine. That's not really a tickle or a scratch in the back of my throat. My throat feels fine._

_I'm fine. I'm fine._

And as long as he closed his eyes and focused on his breathing to the exclusion of anything else, he wouldn't have to _think_ about anything else.

He tried to tell himself that the jittery feeling was just the adrenaline with nowhere to go, and not a fear that he'd been left all alone and forgotten.

And, when the adrenaline slowly burned off and away, leaving him awash with a fatigue like he hadn't felt in a long time, not without a goodly amount of physical effort involved, he slipped into a deep and unwaking unconsciousness.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Fully Anxious and Half-a-sleep

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex woke to the sound of footsteps, soft and quiet and sure, and realized that it must be a maid, sent in to clean up, perhaps the same one Clark had spoken with earlier.

He was tense as a cat blindfolded and then tossed into a room full of rocking chairs, until the woman had finished whatever she'd been doing and left again.

How he managed to doze off again, he was not certain, but he woke a second time to a much louder scuffle and two or three male voices, speaking in rapid-fire fluent spanish. From the sounds of things they were fixing the door, or maybe reinstalling a new one?

At a loud 'bang!' Lex jumped and knocked his head painfully against the underside of the bed, but while he lay there, panting and aching and screaming at himself inside for making noise, for giving himself away now of all times, there were another 'bang!' and loud exclamations and a hurry of footsteps into the room. The bed was knocked hard and slid slightly with a jolt. There was another following clatter and some good-natured laughter. Jibes and half-insults.

As Lex lay there, waiting for the bed to be shoved again and himself to be dragged out from under it, he heard noise and creaking and then came another knock of the bed that shuddered it in its frame, before the sounds of moving and lifting and...

The footsteps retreated a bit and there was more noise at the door again. Another lengthy clatter. Sounds of... what _was_ that?

And then swinging noises, more of... something... _adjustments?_ And then a door slamming shut and voices retreating.

_Wh-- what?_ Why had they stopped and left? He'd been sure that they'd been about to raise the bed and--

Then, through the throbbing of his head, it finally hit him like a ton of bricks. Lex suddenly realized that he'd not been heard over the commotion at all. They'd been replacing the door and... they must've dropped it -- that must have been what had impacted the bed, Lex realized with a tinge of mental hysteria.

Lex shivered on the hard carpeted floor and stifled a laugh. The tension he was feeling, if anything, increased.

When were they going to find him? When would he be found?

The thought to try and sneak out just didn't occur to him. He'd have had to open the door to do so, and as far as he was concerned, the doorknob was about as distant a dream to him as the moon just then.

He suddenly had the overwhelming urge to bang his head upwards against the bottom of the bed, over and over again, just to see how long it would take until someone noticed the noise -- noticed _him_.

But Lex continued to lie there, hidden, and held his head still, instead.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	4. A Long and Noise-filled Day

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex woke several more times to the noise of people outside the motel room door. People walking by, car doors slamming, snatches of laughter -- the least little sounds had him snapping awake with a shudder, tensing up. He found himself generally unable to relax again until he'd recognized and labeled the noises he was hearing, even after they had moved off again. No-one attempted to enter the room, however.

He thought he'd be a nervous wreck in short order after someone took the room next door, with the sounds of the TV and the boisterous conversation that he couldn't quite make out through the muffling walls. Oddly, if anything, the constant noise somehow allowed him to get used to the unfamiliar environment.

That, or the fatigue of attempting constant vigilance wore on him. Soon enough he felt as though he were caught in a grey daze, neither fully-awake, nor quite asleep.

He could feel his fingers twitch involuntarily every so often. He wished for a keyboard. His mind had nothing to attend to. It was one of the reasons why he'd taken so many of those college courses online -- for the longest time, he'd not even been able to even look at a car, or motor vehicle of any sort, without feeling dizzingly sick. The mansion had been too far from town to just... 'walk'... and after Belle Reeve, well, staring at the walls all day in the same room, unmoving, made him feel as though there was no difference between being _there_ and...

Those courses had helped keep him sane, was what it came down to, bottom-line. But what he hadn't really realized was how much control they had given him over the type and duration of his communications with other people. Lex cringed at how _Clark_ had been the one to strike up that conversation with the saleswoman at Fordman's, and then drew Lex into it so skillfully. _Lex_ should have been the one doing that.

But Lex hadn't left the mansion when he hadn't had to in _years_ , not since Lionel had finally given up on him. And what Lex hadn't had to do... it was a small wonder Clark hadn't been more appalled at what a shut-in he'd become. Hell, he'd hardly spoken with his own staff in... no, he didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about any of this.

He shouldn't be thinking about this. He was _wallowing_. He shouldn't be _wallowing_.

Christ, he was hiding under a bed like a frightened _child_ , for god's sake -- what was wrong with him!? He should be trying to think of ways out of this mess, not-- not--

not...

...not feeling as though it was pointless. Not feeling useless, forgotten, unwanted -- Lionel had pulled a gun on Clark, Clark _and him_ \-- had he really become that much of a disappointment to his father, that much of a stain on the family name?

What was he going to do? Even if he and Clark got away from this hotel, how would they avoid capture at the next? And the next? They had no money, no cash or credit, no ID, no skills-in-trade for which they could get jobs for easy pay, to say nothing of their mental-health status. And who knew what unanswerable questions would be asked of them if they even tried? It all seemed so hopeless.

And yet Lex knew that this in no way excused his thoughts or his lack of action. Yet he could not force himself to get up and move and do _something_ , or crawl as the case may be.

He lay there, under the bed, on the dirty ancient carpeted floor, breathing weakly, with thoughts of panic and hopelessness running through his head in circles, and he _could not force himself to stop_.

And that was the worst and most humiliating thing of all. He couldn't stop. He _knew better_ , and he could not stop.

He felt like crying.

He took in a shaky breath and closed his eyes against the dark, and tried not to think of alcohol, because it reminded him of home and what he couldn't have, because he hadn't let himself drink since that day, anyway.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but he heard footsteps and the door open and close, and, muzzily, he began to raise his head before remembering that he couldn't do that without hitting the underside of the bed, and stopped himself.

The foosteps came closer, and all Lex could think was that it was about time Clark had come back. Except...

...something was nagging at him.

Lex heard a creaking thump as the man collapsed onto the bed above him.

There was silence, a lack of any sound of motion for a beat, and then Lex heard a long drawn-out sigh.

Lex opened his mouth to call out, when the persistent nagging finally became a complete thought: Clark's footsteps hadn't sounded quite right.

...But this was Clark, wasn't it? It _had_ to be.

But if it was, then why hadn't he said anything to Lex, yet? Wouldn't he have told him to come out by now?

_But it did sound like him... didn't it?_

Lex began to second guess himself, and the sudden, further thought that a complete stranger might have booked the room, that this might not be Clark, struck a bolt of fear through his shortened frame.

_No,_ Lex thought. He was _not_ trapped in a room with some... some _stranger_. And, even if he was...

\--Would Clark come to get him? He'd still been suffering from the ill aftereffects of the 'good' doctor Cohn's mindcontrol. What if Kal had taken over completely? Kal didn't care about humans, Clark had said...

Oh god. This was bad. How long would he be stuck here? And when could he get out? _How_ could he get out? He couldn't reach the doorknob, could he? He'd at least need a chair... and how could he could pull himself up onto one? He wasn't even sure he could drag one over to the door in the first place...

He couldn't just announce himself to some stranger -- what would they think? --Probably the same thing _he_ would think, if he found someone hiding under a motel bed surreptitiously. Being a crippled mess would only make his presence that much worse, and by now anyone would know of him and recognize him, surely. He'd be shrieked at and reported to the police immediately at best, and at worst...

At worst was something he didn't want to think about; he refused to. He'd managed to live through 'at worst' before. He _didn't_ plan on having to do so again, not ever.

Which begged the question of the hour (day): what the hell was he going to do?

God, he wanted to scream.

He shook on the floor and clenched his hands into fists, instead. And he bit down on his lip, as he heard the man -- Clark? -- laying on the bed above him suddenly sit upright.

And then he had his choice taken away from him.

The bed was suddenly lifted right up and away, up off of him.

Lex squinted at the sudden light, and twisted sideways, blinking up.

And then he froze in panic.

_That isn't Clark._

He was grabbed by the belt and pulled up abruptly, face-to-face with the man.

_Oh god._

~*~*~*~*~*~


	5. Good Communication is the key to any...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex's mind was gibbering at him. It was trying to tell him two different, contradictory things.

 _This isn't Clark,_ screamed every nerve ending in his body. But his eyes and brain said, _This is Clark._

He was wearing the same clothes. He had the same facial features, same bone structure, same hair.

But his mouth was pressed in a thin line, and his eyes--

\--there was something wrong with his eyes--

_This isn't Clark._

_Oh god. This isn't--_

The man set the bed down behind him. He'd been holding it up with one hand.

Lex was grasping at the man's right hand, which had a very firm hold on Lex's belt and pants-waist, but it wasn't comfortable in the least to be dangling mid-air like that, from that, and so he was scrabbling against the hold, trying to get himself upright, to keep himself from--

_\--but I can't get myself upright because I can't stand, and I can't stand because I don't have any legs--_

He hadn't been this tall-- this high up-- since before the accident and--

_\--oh god, he does **not** look happy._

Lex found himself tossed onto the bed, and he fell so hard -- from so high -- that he bounced twice before stopping.

Lex sucked in a shaky breath once the motion finally stopped, staring up at _him_ and quaking internally, because _who the hell is he?_

The man looked insanely angry as he loomed over Lex. And then he took a step towards him, hands beginning to clench into fists.

Lex flinched backwards, panicked and afraid.

The man came to an abrupt halt, eyes widening.

Lex stared up at him, still shivering.

For some reason, as the man slowly straightened, he looked...

He looked confused. And a little... a little...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark stared down at Lex, uncomprehending.

Well, not _Lex_ , obviously, this had to be some sort of Lx-clone or something.

But it was so _bizarre_. The thing had... had _flinched away from him_. He-- _it_ looked _scared_.

Lex _never_ looked scared. Never got scared. Not of him.

Not even the first clones had--

The Lx-clone's fear was scaring _Clark_ , because this was just so _wrong--_

He backed off.

The clone seemed to breathe marginally easier once he did, staring up at him with wide eyes, _shivering_.

And then something sparked in its eyes and it let out a quiet, short laugh.

"Oh," it said. " _You're Superman_."

Clark stared down at it. He didn't have his suit with him, wasn't wearing it underneath his clothing. So how did the clone--? Was it just the lack of glasses?

"Ah," the clone said, seeming to try and collect itself, pushing itself up slightly on its arms, while simultaneously pulling itself a little farther away from him on the bed, as it did so. "I don't suppose I could... perhaps... maybe talk with Clark instead?" it asked weakly, hopefully.

Clark froze.

"I, ah, I mean..." it began to ramble on, "I suppose Kal, er, Kal-El maybe?, could be all right, too, but..." It seemed to steel itself; though it was still shivering slightly, it looked him straight in the eye. "I'd rather Clark. Clark Kent. Please."

Clark's mouth started to drop open, and he clenched his jaw to keep it closed instead. He swallowed hard.

Because this made no sense.

"I suppose the reporter would be acceptable, if needs must," it continued tentatively, "though his southern accent is a bit odd."

No sense.

...Wait.

_Southern accent? I don't have a southern-- Why would he think--?_

And then Clark suddenly realized in a flash: the clone must have been under his bed _this morning_. -- _This_ bed. He'd requested the same room because he'd hoped to find out what had happened and...

"Can you talk?" the clone asked him, its fear starting to shift into... worry? Concern?

For him?

 _Wait a minute. Forget the accent! --How the **hell** does he know how I classify myself?_ The only person he talked with about 'the reporter' being different was **Lois**.

And what did it mean that Lex had apparently given this clone all three of the names for Clark's two known identities?

Clark frowned as he looked over the clone, not liking what he was seeing.

The clone stifled a flinch again.

Clark didn't know _what_ the hell was going on, exactly, but...

He made a decision.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	6. No Dirtier Than...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex yelped as he was grabbed up again.

"What are you--!" he managed to get out, grasping at Superman's arm, but he felt a little like a cat without claws and--

_agh, what--!!_

And now he was in the motel room's little bathroom tub, and Superman was turning on the faucet what the _fuck--_

_agh -- clothes -- mine -- hey -- no!_

"Stop it!" Lex protested in a near-shriek, batting away at Superman as he was stripped of his clothing.

"You're filthy," he was told coldly, and christ, at least he was being spoken to now, but that really was hardly what he'd wanted to hear!

"Get off-- _I can wash myself!_ " Lex hissed out, trying to elbow him and only gifting himself with bruises for his trouble.

And then Superman captured both of his wrists in one large hand and Lex went still. He had to -- he'd have seriously injured himself if he'd tried to continue while restrained like that, and he knew it.

"Let go," Lex said desperately, beginning to shake again. " _Please_."

And for some reason, _that_ got the alien-man's attention.

...Not that his staring was exactly an improvement, considering that Lex was completely naked and sitting on the acrylic floor of a shower tub that, well, who knew how long it had been since it had last been _properly_ cleaned. The maid certainly hadn't ventured very far into the room that morning, from what Lex could remember having been awake for.

"Please let go," Lex repeated quietly, beginning to shiver. Not much of the water was hitting him, but it hadn't heated up yet, and since the accident he'd become even less tolerant of the cold than he'd used to be.

"There aren't any handicap fixtures in here," he was told. "It'll take you forever to bathe yourself."

Lex stifled a shudder. "Fine," he bit out, though it cost him dearly. "Just _let go_."

He was barely able to manage meeting Superman's stare. Barely. But he did. He knew what he looked like.

Superman stared at him for a long time, long enough that the water started getting warm.

But then he slowly let go of Lex's wrists while still holding his gaze, as though he expected Lex to attack him. Ineffectually. Again.

Lex declined to do so. His pride had suffered enough that day. And what little he had left from _this_ might be wanting to crawl off somewhere dark -- _like back under the bed_ \-- and _die_ , but he'd be _damned_ if he'd let it.

Even if it cost him. _Especially_ so.

Superman reached up and grabbed some soap and towels, and then Lex was subjected to two minutes of scrubbing and watering-down that was completed by the alien with a clinical-like efficiency and mental remove.

And then he was scooped back up again, dried off with just about as much efficiency within a handful of seconds, bundled up in another two dry towels -- about the shoulders, and the waist -- and found himself unceremoniously dumped back onto a chair in front of the closed curtains in the main room.

His clothes were nowhere to be-- oh, wait, no, they were bundled up under Superman's arm like--

\--did he just throw them in the trash?

Lex stared in shock as Superman tied up the garbage bag and pulled it out of the cheap plastic bin container with a look of distaste, and he almost bit out a retort that his phone had been in his pocket--

...but in the end he simply held his tongue. It would do him no good as things stood anyway; he'd had to remove the battery earlier so as not to be tracked -- and a fat lot of good that had done them, damn them all -- and he hadn't anyone he _could_ call with it to help them to begin with...

\--and now Superman was headed for the door.

"Wait!" Lex called out, struggling to turn in place while keeping a more upright seated position.

Superman paused with a hand on the handle.

"Where are you going?" Lex asked, starting to feel a little panicked all over again, and honestly, could his emotions _make up their damn mind_ already? He felt scared when he was too close; he felt scared when he was leaving. Where the hell did that leave him?

...Scared of two completely different things. _\--Damnit, I want Clark back!_

But somehow, he knew he wasn't going to _get_ him back, because the Clark he knew had been an illusion, a lie, a construct left over from Dr. Cohn's manipulations that had been going on well-before Lex had come to see him in Belle Reeve after he'd 'taken an interest in his well-being' again. 'Clark' had been the last bit of him still left, still fighting back...

_...I'm never going to see my friend again,_ Lex realized in sorrow and horror.

And he knew this because this Superman was too well put-together to be just a mere 'persona', and Clark had been in dire straits the previous night.

The only explanation that made _any_ sense at all was...

_...he doesn't remember anything of what happened._

If he had, he would _not_ have been so surprised at finding Lex where he had. He certainly would not have treated him this way, treated him like...

Lex swallowed hard.

He was back to being the self -- his _real_ self -- who he had been before Dr. Cohn had gotten his hands on him.

Damn the man.

Lex gradually tilted his head upwards towards Superman as the man-alien stared at him without response, and somehow found enough bravery to ask, "Will you be back?"

Superman frowned at him. His lips thinned in something like annoyance.

But he nodded once and said, "Don't go anywhere," before exiting. He shut the door behind him.

Lex let out a shallow breath, and then slowly, carefully, pulled in a deeper one.

He still didn't have an inhaler. Asthma attacks could be set off by extreme stress. It was something else he knew.

He shivered once.

And then he curled his fingers into the towel around his shoulders, pulled it around him a little more closely, and resolved himself to waiting.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	7. Searching for Compass-North

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark frowned to himself as he walked off towards the road, then across it. He tossed a look back over his shoulder at the motel room for a long moment, then 'vanished' into superspeed once he was far enough away from the lights of the motel.

He got his bearings and sped east, back towards Metropolis.

He made a quick stop in Granville -- not Smallville, lord knew who Lex might've gotten to set up an ambush with Kryptonite there -- just long enough to use his heat vision to burn the bag containing the clone's clothes to ash and toss the remnants into a dumpster -- he didn't really want to think about how nasty all that dust and grime under the bed had been. He'd already gotten an eyeful of it earlier when he'd lifted the frame up, and a lot of it had clung to the clone's outerwear. The maid was probably going to hate him, trying to get that coverlet clean the next morning.

He rubbed at his forehead as he stood in the Metropolis alleyway and stared down at the cellphone he'd liberated from the clone's jacket pocket before bagging it.

Oddly, it had removed the battery from the phone. The only reason Clark could think of doing that was to avoid a common trace, but when he scanned the hardware itself with x-ray vision...

...actually, there were no bugs or obvious tracers in it, how strange.

He hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary when he'd scanned the clone, either. He'd given him a cursory check when he'd tossed him onto the bed, but he'd been thorough when he'd been cleaning it off in the shower. Inside and out, the clone was clean. And that was mindboggling -- regardless of how Lex might've programmed it, he'd never let a clone with that much information in it run loose without some way to trace it.

Clark had given the room a cursory listen for electronic noise when he'd first entered -- and missed the clone's heartbeat, like an idiot -- but he had given it a full listen-and-scan after that nasty little surprise. There was nothing in the room either -- also clean of surveillance, if nothing else -- and there wasn't a phone line, either. The clone was probably stuck there until he got back.

_Unless Lex had someone situated in the hotel to talk with it, and update him, face-to-face._

But Clark had half-an-ear on the motel room, even now, and he hadn't heard _anything_ so far, outside of Lex's breathing and slowly calming heartbeat.

Clark looked back down at the phone in his hand. Well, there weren't any _obvious_ tracers in it, but...

Clark crushed it and tossed the pieces into the dumpster as well, along with the battery. Lex wouldn't have been so sloppy as to leave anything useful on the device for Chloe to find, so it was no small loss.

Then he headed for Watchtower, with thoughts of the clone still nagging his mind. There was just something really, really... _off_ about it. Something not quite right... beyond the lack of legs, anyway, and if he ever figured out how Lex had found out about that Phantom-induced nightmare--

God, it made him sick. That Lex would _do_ something like that, to 'himself', a something that could be himself, that had turned out in every other way imaginable a perfect copy of him, except for the legs -- those legs that that looked like they'd been amputated when there'd been nothing wrong with them otherwise... that he would make another self and **mutilate** it like that...

It was sick, horribly sickening, and Clark couldn't believe-- he couldn't contemplate _how_ \--

_But it's not him,_ Clark reminded himself as he sped towards Watchtower at a slow clip. _Mentally, it's nothing like him, really,_ he couldn't help but think, and was that really an excuse somehow? That because he didn't seem as bloody-minded, as angry, as willing to fight to the death, that... that somehow made it okay? ...But no, it wasn't just that, there was something... something _minor_. Some minor physical difference, something ever-so-slightly... _off_ , and why couldn't he put his finger on it?!

And then all thoughts of the clone fled his mind for a moment as Clark came to a screeching halt in from of the Watchtower.

...or rather, the _clock tower_ that was rising above him.

Clark stood there, gaping, for he knew not how long, before he realized what he was doing and sped off and up onto a nearby rooftop.

He scanned the interior and-- nothing. It was like it had never been.

_Chloe, where are you? What happened?_

Frowning, he turned in place to see what else was different about Metropolis.

\--and he froze, as he caught sight of the LuthorCorp Towers -- and Lionel Luthor, in an office there, talking on the phone, looking irate.

_"I don't care **what** you have to do, I want them **found!** "_ Clark heard Lionel rant as he listened in.

His gut clenched and he abruptly pulled back from his eavesdropping, stumbled back a few steps for good measure, his mind was reeling so hard.

_What the hell--??_

This wasn't right _at all_. Lex wouldn't clone _Lionel_. He just... wouldn't. And, the state of Watchtower aside, he _certainly_ wouldn't turn back the name on his corporate headquarters for some mere joke or _any_ sort of diabolical scheme. No way.

Fine, all right. So cloning was out. That left magic, Phantom-possession-take-two, the VRA's virtual reality-scape, alternate realities, and ( _maybe_ ) time travel.

Magic was probably out. He'd been in Oklahoma, then here. Unless it was something that was attached to him, specifically, then it just wouldn't fly -- no local spell could cover that much distance. But if it were a spell attached to him... no. This was just too much breadth for it to cover. He'd been using his powers almost non-stop; unless this was some hallicunatory episode, he couldn't have just _imagined_ all of this under one small spell, and his mind was too clear for that, anyway.

Phantom-possession was also out. That had a _feel_ to it, a little like silver Kryptonite had, once he'd been dropped out of it long enough to realize it and make the distinction. He knew he'd recognize it again if it had happened.

The virtual reality had been something that he hadn't been able to tell the difference between -- except for the obvious of no usual powers -- either in or out of it. And, while Lex's Summerholt tech had been used as its basis originally, that tech had been given to the Department of Domestic Security by Lex in exchange for a stop to an investigation into Kara and the second meteor shower. It had then been modified by the Project Starhawk team, then obtained by Checkmate's Black King at the time, Maxwell Lord, then usurped and developed and further enhanced by the VRA to allow for brain modification to determine how to suppress superpowers -- like a lightswitch, turn them on and turn them off -- through virtual simulation and brain mapping. Unless Lex had managed to get his hands on the new specs, that was a long development path to get from what he had to what they had. He'd managed to modify his tech for better viewing, retrieval, and deletion without the need to direct-delve brain-to-brain, but that was a far cry from producing a whole new and evolving simulated environment.

But there was a hole in that theory -- even if the VRA version of the tech was being used, Clark wasn't entirely sure that they could have properly simulated his superpowers inside the world-scape. Flying in the sim hadn't felt like flying did now, and how could they have known what to hand to his eyes when he was seeing through buildings, to make it all look _right_ , they way it was supposed to, and he expected it to? Not to mention that the _scope_ of it was looking downright unmanageable, given that he'd already run himself across and around several hundred miles of landscape already.

He supposed it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility for Lex to have taken it up a notch, though, and it beat out the other possibilities. Plus, it explained the headache -- that was very similar to what he'd felt in the sim, right when he'd started.

An alternate reality _could_ explain this, but he'd fallen asleep in bed next to Lois the night before, no mirror-box in sight.

...Though he supposed that the Clark from this timeline could have found and used it from his end, instead. That didn't explain the headache, though. --All right, maybe that was a viable possibility, too.

Time-travel was probably a wash; Clark couldn't contemplate circumstances that would have led to Lionel being reanimated-through-bad-cloning. Lex wouldn't do it; Tess definitely wouldn't do it. No-one else had the tech to manage even a good college-try at it.

Okay, so he was down to virtual world-scape and alternate reality. There was probably an easy way to check that.

Clark sped off to Smallville.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	8. Missing Pieces

~*~*~*~*~*~

_All right, so maybe this doesn't exactly narrow down the possibilities, either,_ Clark grumpily realized, after coming to a stop in front of the Kawatche caves... which weren't there. _Damn._

He tried running to the Kawatche settlement next, but they weren't there, either. Just forest.

So Clark, feeling a little fed up with the situation, launched himself into the air.

He floated above, trying to figure out where they were, and frowning at the lay of the land. Something was off, and this was niggling at him like a hole in the world.

_...No,_ he realized, eyes widening as he rotated in place, _not a hole in the world, but a **lack** of one!_

Crater Lake was gone. Gone-gone, as in _missing_. As in _never been_ , never existed, and...

_Oh man,_ he realized as he scanned the landscape, all the normal, usual landmarks, the scars of the various meteor hits over two showers of fire from the sky, were simply **not there**.

And then he grew quiet and still as he realized what had been bugging him about the clone.

_Not something there, but something missing._ It had been _missing_ Lex's usual meteor-mutation, the super-high white blood cell count that was even more out of 'normal' balance than any of the other exposed in town.

_Oh, wonderful,_ Clark thought faintly. Because if there hadn't been a meteor storm here, not even one...

_Well, I suppose that rules out alternate realities,_ Clark thought faintly, as he curled his arms around his midsection. _No meteor shower means no Kryptonians, and no Kryptonian artifacts._ There was no other way that Clark knew of to skip realities, andif Lex had found some way to do so remotely, then Lois should've been dragged down into this reality along with him.

Wonderful. Lex had stuck him in a VR sim that reminded him of that stupid Phantom-reality he'd been stuck in years ago, Fairview and all.

_That bastard son-of-a--_

...

_Fine, whatever, so the rules have changed,_ Clark thought grumpily to himself. He hadn't been able to get out before without being told where the doorway was by Chloe's self-driven avatar, and believing it was there and that he could get through it. Maybe he had his powers to rely on 'here', but that didn't do him a heck of a lot of good when he couldn't use them to skip over next door back to reality.

So, yeah. He had his powers. And Lex was probably not the one driving his avatar, because there was no way that Lex could fake fear of him like that. No way.

So, not a clone, but either another LexCorp employee or some AI subroutine. Great...

Well, whatever. Clark would just play along, then. He nominally knew what Lex already knew about the League, and himself. If he stuck to only 'revealing' or leveraging that, he'd be fine.

It was going to be a hell of a wait for someone to find him and rescue him, though.

...Might as well make the most of it in the meantime.

Clark dropped out of the Smallvillian sky and ducked back into town for a moment. He stripped his shirt off and tossed it into a dumpster, torching it to ash in midair and feeling that much cleaner for it. He might've washed up Lex, and himself a bit in the process, but he'd gotten a good bit of that gunk on his shirt when he'd been manhandling Lex into the tub, earlier. 

_...Speaking of which,_ Clark thought as he looked down at himself in his undershirt and pants, _I'm not the only one who needs a decent set of clothes._

And with that, he decided to play this game in main force.

After all, why not? It'd certainly give Lex a lot to think about...

~*~*~*~*~*~


	9. Play The Game

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark bounded off to find himself a nice coal mine in Western Virginia, and got himself a few handfuls of the good stuff under the cover of night.

He spent a little time crushing himself some diamonds by a stream, and then washing the resulting powdery mess off of both the diamonds and his hands.

Then he went north.

He sped up and over the Arctic Circle, traveling at super-speed, flying low.

He stopped when he was in Russia, and switched to a blurred-run through the streets of Moscow.

He found himself a nice blind spot through the twists and turns of the city, and found himself an open jeweler easily enough. After all, it might have been late at night in the US, but it was the middle of the morning in Russia.

He haggled over prices a bit, his 'grandmother's jewels' being of so very much sentimental value and importance to him (heh) that he wanted to make sure they would be well-cared for and stay out of the mafia's hands (not so funny), then sold his entire handful of flawless diamonds to the dealer and got his payment in cash: rubles.

He hit the street, intending to move along quickly, but at the smells coming from a street cart, he decided to take a little break and got himself a good full meal of kolbasa and sauerkraut, then treated himself to ice cream after. After a moment of thought, he also got himself three servings and a small takeaway bag of both blini and sour cream. As he rolled up and absently munched on a few of the really excellent little pancakes -- apparently even in virtual reality one had to virtually-eat, and he hadn't had anything since a leftover bagel from the motel's breakfast nook that morning -- he casually strolled among the various street-level tourist currency converter stalls. He paid close attention to the transactions he was hearing, and shortly made a man in the back of a very long line very happy by offering to swap straight-up for Euros and U.S. Dollars, as the man was running low on the state currency and obviously in a rush. He made small-talk in flawless Russian with the man about heading West for further travels abroad, and with the requisite just-enough-shared-information out of the way to not seem too suspicious, he walked away feeling pretty happy at a good deed done -- he'd swapped for much better than the daily exchange rate in the other man's favor.

...at least until he remembered that nothing and nobody in here was really real.

Then he walked himself off and did a quick dash following the railway tracks to France.

It was a bit earlier there, some shops just barely opening, so Clark just sighed and left Paris for later.

He held the bag of blini to his chest carefully and sped his way up and over the polar ice cap again, and back down into the North American contintent.

He made a brief stopover in Anchorage for two nice, warm coats at a 24-hour Walmart, and then another jaunt to Toronto to briefly grab some generic clothing from an RCSS before it hit 11 o'clock.

By the time he was back at the motel, it was late enough that no-one was out and about, let alone paying the least bit of attention. The place didn't have a single security camera other than the main desk, either.

So Clark just shoved the RCSS bag inside the Walmart one, and strolled on up with his odds and ends from all over and unlocked the door.

He pushed in quietly, because it had looked and sounded like the not-Lex was asleep.

He realized that that hadn't been the case, though, when the not-Lex blinked his eyes open blearily at him.

Another odd thing that didn't fit in -- this Lex _slouched_ in chairs.

"Did you sleep at all?" Clark asked, mostly thinking of himself. He really wanted to hit the sack and sleep for a year, the way he was feeling just then.

"I'm not sure," not-Lex said quietly, rubbing at his eyes as Clark flipped on the light.

"Here," Clark said, thrusting the bag of leftover blinis and sour cream at the not-Lex. He changed his clothes while not-Lex blinked down at the bag and opened it.

He did a once-over of the room while not-Lex pulled out a russian pancake, dipped it, and ate it. His movements were careful, and slow, but not languid or smooth or anything Lex-like at all, really.

Then again, he couldn't really remember a time when he'd ever seen Lex so tired. Not-Lex looked like he was drained of all that vital energy.

It was still weird.

Clark got rid of the tags from the larger of the coats and slipped it on. He did his shoes, next. He removed the tags from the other set of clothing for the not-Lex and couldn't help but stare at him a little as he did. ...No, he wasn't Lex-like at all, but somehow he still drew and captivated the attention. ...or Clark's attention, at least. So maybe they'd sort of gotten some of the programming right.

When Clark was ready, he stood back up and dragged the clothing bags over with him. "C'mon," he said, taking the food away from not-Lex, who frowned a little.

"I wasn't..."

"Dress now; eat more later," Clark told him.

"Why...?" the not-Lex said quietly, watching and tracking the movement of the food Clark was pulling out of his lap and his grasp rather than Clark himself.

"Because Lionel was having a snit-fit in his LuthorCorp office earlier," Clark said, "and I'd rather not have a repeat of the welcoming committee this morning, if it's all the same to you," he ended on a sarcastic note, setting the bag of food down on a side table with a soft thump.

Not-Lex took one last look at the food and sighed deeply, then looked up at Clark with very tired eyes.

Clark made sure he really was fully dried off now, then got him into underwear, pants, undershirt, shirt, and got everything tucked in and away and together.

This 'Lex' didn't really fight him on it. If anything, he tried to help the manhandling along, though he did make odd noises under his breath now and again. ...Thinking on it, he'd done the same thing in the shower once or twice, too.

"Something wrong?" Clark asked, as he pulled out the coat, and not-Lex gave it a baleful look before holding out an arm and making that noise again.

"Just sore," not-Lex said.

"From sitting in the chair?" Clark frowned.

"From lying flat under the bed in a weird position," not-Lex corrected him without inflection, but with no real strength behind it.

Clark grimaced. Lois complained about things like that sometimes. Chloe had sometimes, when she'd pulled not-quite-all-nighters at the Torch. Apparently sleeping bags weren't enough cushioning between a human body and a cold, hard floor.

He helped not-Lex into the coat, then rolled up the bag of food and handed it back over.

"Don't go trying to eat while I'm running us around," he warned the Lex, and quickly cleaned up at superspeed, tossing his previous clothing and shoes into the bags, and the towels onto the bed.

Not-Lex merely blinked at him, holding the small brown paper bag loosely in his arms.

"All right," Clark said to himself quietly. He slid a hand through the loops of the bags until they were around one of his wrists, then hoisted the Lex-lookalike up into his arms.

When not-Lex made a quiet startled exclamation, Clark paused a moment. "Something wrong?" he asked under his breath.

"You're... warm," the not-Lex murmured, letting his eyes drift closed. A little of the tension went out of his face, and he even snuggled up to him slightly.

 _Of course I am, what did you expect me to be?_ Clark thought, frowning down at him. But with this Lex not fighting the bridal-carry, Clark shifted his hold to try and make it more comfortable... and more secure.

And then Lex let out a soft sigh and relaxed a little more into his chest.

\--Not-Lex. This was not Lex. He... he didn't even have legs, _what am I thinking?_

Was this part of his nemesis' real game? Some strange plot to... what? Make him _like_ him again?

 _I was the one who told him I'd rather be friends than nemeses,_ Clark thought tiredly, belligerently, as he turned the knob and gently kicked open the door. _Why's he got to be so darn contradictory all the time?_

Assuming that was what he'd wanted out of this, anyway.

Clark mentally grumbled to himself as he stepped out and slid immediately into superspeed.

And then they were gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	10. Taking care of background business

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark stopped short at a deserted park on the outskirts of San Francisco.

He carefully set Lex down on a park bench, near a lamp-post.

Lex stirred as he was set down, then looked around slowly. He tilted his head and blinked up at Clark quizzically.

"Stay here," Clark said.

"Why?" he was asked.

Clark almost spat back a _because I said so!_ but that was way too derogatory to say to even a non-Lex Lex and... kind of petty and mean. "I have things I need to do," he said instead, turning to go.

"Will you be back?" he heard behind him, and the tone shocked him so much that he glanced back over his shoulder involuntarily.

Big mistake. He shouldn't have done that.

Clark quickly turned away again. "Yes," he managed to get out tonelessly through gritted teeth, and he took a few steps before he sped away.

 _That's the second time he's asked me that,_ Clark thought, and it felt like knives in the chest just as badly this time as the last.

But he wasn't going far this time. He had picked the park because he could keep L-- the not-Lex within hearing distance as he went about creating fake records for the two of them. Given Lionel's state of ire, and Lex's state of... being, they were probably better off for now hiding rather than fighting. They needed to get their bearings, first; Clark needed to get the lay of the land in this virtual world.

The park's location was nearly equidistant from each of the various DMV and government offices that he was going to be surreptitiously breaking into to get access to their computer systems and records for that purpose. Chloe had taught him and the other Leaguers well, after the VRA issues had past. She hadn't wanted any of them to run into problems with hiding themselves if that sort of thing ever happened again.

So, with half-an-ear on the TV news stations being played elsewhere in the 'background' noise of the city, listening for any reports that might be on him and the currently-benched Luthor -- or _anything_ Luthor -- he was keeping another half-an-ear on Lex, so he heard Lex when he whispered quietly, "I could almost see the cape when you walked."

Clark twitched. He didn't like that one bit. That was the sort of thing Lois usually _teased_ him about, but L-- not-Lex had said it like...

 _Like he meant it,_ Clark mentally grumbled to himself. _He said it like he was serious, and **not** as an insult._ He shook his head. At this rate, he might as well call him 'Lex' and be done with it.

But could he do that? _Should_ he do that? He and the Lex that Clark knew were completely different... almost. But that was the problem -- the 'almost'.

...Some people had the same names, but were totally different and separate people. Why couldn't he just think of him as another 'Lex', distinct and unique unto himself? 

_Because he's not actually real and is probably just a convenient avatar interface for you to be fed information from by Luthor, that's why,_ he told himself darkly, as he finished with the first system. He closed everything down, turned off the monitor, and zipped out, ending up at the edge of the park in the shadows, watching 'Lex' as he slowly ate the last of the blini.

He sped away again to his next destination, took his time breaking in. _You know you're really only keeping him around and with you because you know that's how this game is going to be played,_ the thought nagged at him.

 _But I do have to call him something,_ he reasoned with himself. _Calling him not-Lex just means I'll get surprised over and over again by him and his reactions because I won't be seeing **him** , I'll be seeing and expecting a photo-negative image of Lex._ And he needed to be able to concentrate. If for no other reason than that there was a Lionel here, he needed to be able to concentrate.

He finished with that system, logged out, and sped back to check up on Lex as before, because there were some odd rustling sounds he was hearing from him, or nearby, and--

Clark came to a stop right in front of him. Lex was curled up on his side on the bench, arms pillowing his head, eyes closed.

He was shivering slightly.

"Cold?" Clark heard himself ask.

"A little," came the soft reply.

Clark stood there for he wasn't sure how long. Then, he took off his own coat and draped it over Lex.

 _Let's face it,_ he told himself as he ran away, _you are always going to want to save Lex. You might as well just go with it, maybe get it out of your system a little bit,_ and that made him wonder if that was actually Lex's point. Might he have set up this simulation to eventually wean Clark off of his so-called 'savior' kick? That was... screwy.

He flinched at the sleepy, mumbled "thank you" he heard.

Clark rubbed his face with his hands and stared down at the final door.

Feeling impatient, he just sheared the knob off of the door with the flat of his palm.

He stepped inside and got to work quickly.

Then he made the place look like it'd been tossed and took three random files out of drawers (that had looked like they were duplicates) and burned them to ash. He had to make it look real, after all. The social security bureau wasn't one of those places that a body could just walk into and do things without being noticed. If the office didn't suspect the files, they'd have checked the computers, and the script he'd stuck in their system would need an hour or two to run.

But then maybe Clark was overthinking this. Maybe it wasn't Lex who'd gotten or upgraded the Summerholt tech. Maybe it was some leftover branch of the VRA, or some other government agency, and they'd just upgraded it that little step further -- superpowers and all.

...Though, even pessimistically, he didn't see how that could be the case. This 'Lex' was different, but also too similar to have been made without the memory engrams of the original, and Lex never would have stood for that -- letting someone else mess with his nemesis like that. Considering that Lex was harder to get at than the President these days, if Lex didn't want to do something, nobody, but nobody, was going to force him to do it. So they couldn't have gotten the emory engrams they needed by force, either.

Ergo, it had to be Lex's doing that he was stuck here, however Lex had managed it.

Happy with his logic, and the mess he'd made of the bureau office, Clark hurried back to the park.

Lex looked and sounded like he might be asleep, but Clark wasn't about to be fooled after the last time. Instead, he just grabbed the now-empty food bag and the bag of old clothing and vaporized them over a nearby trash bin container.

Then Clark scooped Lex back up.

 _Win the battle, lose the war?_ But the only real way to lose against Lex was to refuse to play. That sort of thing just pissed him off, and that never ended well. He always found other outlets.

 _This_ Lex was perfectly comfortable with cuddling up into Clark's arms, and it was almost enough to make Clark want to blush.

...He was pretty sure Lex was asleep this time, all bundled up in his coat. He hadn't woken up, either. Wasn't that unusual, especially for this Lex?

Clark sighed and glanced around. He started to stride away with him, and opened up the range of his hearing and vision. He was looking for something specific, and he was hoping to find it nearby.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex twitched a little and grimaced at the sound of a bell ringing.

He shifted in Clark's arms -- _mm, so warm_ \-- and then slowly opened his eyes. And remembered.

_Ah. Not Clark. ...Why did I think that?_

He realized that Superman was kneeing open a door, and then rotating through it, his back to the glass.

...He glanced up briefly. The bell had been overhead.

Lex brought his chin back down and leaned in, towards and up against the alien's chest again, resettling himself. He curled his fingers tentatively into Superman's soft, plaid-patterned, deep blue, button-down shirt. _Little white buttons..._

Then he frowned slightly because he couldn't really remember Superman picking him up.

But barring the aches and pains of his hours-long stint under that motel bed earlier, he was feeling warm and relaxed, safe and secure; it was a far cry from the panic he'd felt before. _Possibly because he came back,_ Lex realized as his thoughts grew a bit less molasses-like in their consistency. _He kept coming back. He left, but he didn't leave me._

_...I wasn't left behind._

Maybe Superman...

...maybe...

...maybe there was some little bit of Clark still there left inside of him, after all?

It was a comforting thought. A very comforting thought.

One thing was for certain, though -- he definitely did not want Superman treating him like a nemesis ever again.

...And then Superman was lying blatantly to two women about _\--what!?_

~*~*~*~*~*~


	11. Two men walk into an apartment complex...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex might not have been completely awake before, but he had gotten some food in him, and _he certainly was now_.

" _ **What were you doing?**_ " Lex nearly hissed up at him as Clark set him down on the bed.

"I was getting us a room."

"You--! You _lied!_ " Lex accused, dropping his voice as he glanced at the door, hearing footsteps, as he wasn't entirely sure whether he might be heard clearly or not if he complained any louder.

"Lex--"

"Oh no," Lex said, scooting away from him, "not **Lex**. Apparently _I'm_ Joseph Kent!!" he said angrily, grinding his teeth.

Superman actually rolled his eyes before he sat down on the bed next to him, and Lex shoved himself farther away, up against the pillows. "And I'm Alexander Jerome Stahlmeier. So what? Is there something wrong with 'Joe' and 'Jerry' that I don't know about?"

"You stole my name!"

"Part of it," Superman ceded. "But I did it for a good reason."

"Why?!?" Lex said, thumping a pillow behind him with a fist in sheer frustration.

"Because we don't want Lionel finding us that quickly; several sets of names used among different groups of people will make it hard to track us down. And that way those two at the front desk won't be suspicious as to why I want to be called Jerry instead of Alex."

"What?" Lex said.

"Our backstory," Superman said patiently, removing one of his sneakers. "We first 'met' through online gaming. Your pseudonym online is Lex. Mine is Calvin, or sometimes Cal." Superman removed the other, and set both of them aside at the foot of the bed. "That way if either of us 'slip up', we've got a reason to be doing so. And a good reason that I don't go by Alex with you -- because it's your screenname; it would be weird."

"When exactly did we come up with this?" Lex asked, head spinning. "Because I certainly don't remember agreeing to any of this, and think I would have liked to have had some input on the matter!"

" _I_ came up with it," Superman said with an eerie calm. "And I did it while I was creating digital background records for us in the various governmental computer systems I was hacking. You were kind of out of it at the time, eating and dozing off on that park bench."

Lex stared at him.

"I'm not sure which is worse," Lex said faintly. "That you felt a need to give us new cover identities, or that you might have been actually able to do it."

"Definitely able to do it," Superman corrected him. "Or, at least the records exist now. Though I suppose that we'll know for sure in the morning when we go in to pick up new 'copies' of our new ID's tomorrow," Superman said. "Printing off the cards at night outside of normal hours would have raised too many red flags."

"...Which is why you sold them the whole 'got mugged' sob story," Lex said slowly. Neither of them had had any ID on them, or their wallets; Lex also no longer had his phone...

"It explains the lack of a wheelchair, too," Superman pointed out, as he pulled out a wad of cash and counted out two hundred dollars in twenties, six ones, and a smattering handful of change. "Here," he said, folding the rest of the wad and handing it over, "stick this where it's supposed to be."

Lex stared at the rather thick wad for a bit, then finally reached out long fingers and carefully took it from his outstretched hand.

"Do I want to know how you got this?" he asked with a calm he did not feel. He was fairly certain that Superman was not supposed to rob banks...

"Mined some coal; crushed it into diamonds; sold it overseas," came the abbrevated response as Superman stood up. "I think that's enough time to have passed to retrieve this, don't you?" he said, waving the smaller handful of money casually in front of him.

Superman tossed Lex the second set of apartment keys, then crossed the room and padded out into the hallway to the front lobby. The door slowly closed behind him.

Lex stared after him blinking.

Then he grimaced, sighed, split the wad of cash he'd been given in half -- by country and denomination -- and then stuffed them down to the bottom of his tied-off sweatpants, one-wad-per-leg each.

...All things considered, it _was_ a practical place to have had hidden cash if you were worried about getting mugged out on the street.

Lex sighed and fell backwards into the pillows.

He took a moment to close his eyes and relax, then opened them again and glanced around the small apartment room, taking it all in.

It was a fully-furnished efficiency, and it seemed roomier than it was. It wasn't quite a lack of furniture, just what looked like careful planning.

Everything also seemed...

...small. A lot of things looked to be low to the ground.

Lex frowned and sat up.

As he made a slower inspection, he crawled forward on the bed to get a better view of the ground-floor room.

There were a lot of odd sorts of fixtures that he'd never seen before. The entire kitchenette seemed to be made for a much shorter person, as well ...or one in a wheelchair.

Had this been what the women at the front desk -- their two landladies as soon as Superman finished paying them their lowered-through-pity and taken-in-good-faith partial advance on the full rent for the rest of the month -- had meant when they had said it was a 'handicapped-accessible' apartment?

...If this had been what Clark had been expecting the mansion to be like -- ground-floor, everything custom-tailored to his needs -- then it was a small wonder that he'd been thrown into such shock, and so horrified at seeing it otherwise.

With a suddenly-sharp eye, Lex realized that even without a wheelchair, he could probably get himself around the small apartment pretty easily, quickly, and well.

...He wondered what the bathroom looked like.

Then he wondered if Superman had managed to choose out this place _on purpose_. Lex couldn't see how, though -- it had been the first, and only, place they had visited, straight from the park.

Then again, for that matter, how had Superman known about the computer issues in the main office of the motel they'd been staying at, when he'd woken up that morning? If that hadn't been an actual problem, he'd have been caught out, wouldn't he? And surely Lex would have heard the ruckus of the fight even from as far away as the motel room had been.

Lex's mind was churning over again by the time Superman re-entered the room.

"Hey," Superman said, closing the door and locking it. "Uh, just so you know, in case you, uh, didn't pick up on it earlier?" he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "The two women up front are life partners." He paused. "You know: lesbian."

"Yes, thank you Superman, I was able to gather that." He wasn't blind, or stupid.

"And you don't have a problem with it?" he was asked.

"No," Lex frowned, looking up at the alien-man. "Why, do you?"

"No," Superman assauged him. "I'm fine with it." He shoved himself over onto the other side of the king-sized mattress and pulled up the covers. "I'm just glad it's not an issue for you."

"Why?" Lex said, ever wondering what this had to do with anything at all.

"Because now they think we're life partners, too." Superman informed him lightly, sliding under the covers and presenting his back to him. "Goodnight!" he said cheerfully.

Lex stared at him for a long time.

Then he clapped off the light and, grumbling, burrowed under the covers himself.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
